Sworn Secret (7 page)

But Rebecca didn’t run. She, too, it seemed, had lost her fight, collapsed as she was against the gate, wheezing and crying with exhaustion. She turned slowly to face Kate, who put her hands gently on the girl’s shoulders, panting heavily, her lungs burning. Then, as Kate stood just inches away from her daughter’s closest friend, mere feet from the exact spot where her daughter had died, she began to be bombarded with horrific images of Anna that she’d spent a year trying to wipe from her mind. Kate closed her eyes tightly and violently shook her head, desperate to block them out. Anna’s twisted body. Rigid on the ground. The pool of blood that circled her head like a devil’s halo, shining black in the moonlight. Her creamy skin spattered with grit. Dead eyes staring at the stars. Her blue-tinged mouth open as if calling for her mother.

‘Not here,’ Kate rasped.

Kate tried to drag her away from the shadow of the gymnasium, back towards the main school building. Rebecca started to pull and wriggle, digging her feet into the playground, yanking her arm back again and again. But Kate held on, desperate to get away from the recollections of Anna. When at last they began to fade enough for Kate to think, she turned Rebecca to face her, held the girl’s hands in hers, and bent so she was level with her face.

‘Now,’ she said, flat and quiet. ‘Tell me.’

Rebecca lifted her eyes and for a moment or two they held each other’s stare, but then her face set hard, eyes narrowing, mouth clamped shut, surly, uncooperative.

Make me
, she said silently to Kate.
You just try and make me.

And then every emotion Kate had, everything that occupied her, the anger and frustration, the guilt, pain, hurt, the bastard unfairness of it all, swelled up inside like boiling milk.
Why wasn’t it you instead of her? Why did she have to die and you get to live
? Kate would have sold her soul for sixpence to have the tragedy the other way round. Was it wrong of her to feel that?

‘Tell me!’ she screamed. ‘For Christ’s sake, speak!’

But Rebecca gave her nothing. Kate started to shake her, as those returning images of her dead daughter bit into her with every push and pull. Rebecca’s head flopped back and forth like a rag doll’s. There was no resistance from her, just blankness, acceptance and a glaze that covered her eyes like a scab with whatever she knew buried beneath.

‘Why won’t you fucking tell me?’ Kate screamed. ‘You stupid little girl! I know you know something!’

Kate kept screaming at her, on and on, and the more she screamed and the longer Rebecca stayed quiet, the angrier Kate became until everything blurred and all she could see was the six-foot photograph of Anna that hung over the stage, but instead of her glowing skin and breathing beauty, the face she saw was bloodied and deformed, flattened so there was no definition, a nose so badly broken it didn’t protrude from her face, her teeth smashed, her skin saturated beneath the surface with blood, all swollen and bloated like a purple balloon.

Kate lost all control of herself then. She lifted her hands and began pounding them into Rebecca. Again and again she beat her fists against her, hitting out at all the pain she felt, begging Anna to be alive. Kate’s hands flailed, smacking into Rebecca in a clouded frenzy, her sobbing mingling with Rebecca’s and Stephen’s speech on angels, and Angela Howe shouting from somewhere behind her, and then Jon, close to her, begging her to stop.

Blame and Reflection

‘Please, God, Kate! Stop it!’ He pushed himself between them, putting a hand on Kate’s shoulder to distance her from Rebecca. ‘Kate! Stop! Stop.’

Eventually Kate’s exhausted hands stopped hitting and fell to her sides as if she’d run out of batteries.

‘Kate?’ he breathed.

He saw her eyes focus on him and as they did, the realization of what had happened, of what she’d done, slowly grew. With his hand on his wife’s shoulder, Jon turned to Rebecca, who was hunched and shivering on the floor like a terrified animal. Her arms covered her face, a split lip just visible beneath the crook of an elbow. He reached out to touch her. She recoiled, and as she did the enormity of what had happened fell on him like a dead weight.

He looked then at Angela Howe, who was doing her best to control the gathering crowd. He frantically scanned the faces until he found Lizzie, her bewilderment and terror a reflection of his own. He was torn between going to her and staying with Kate and Rebecca, but when Rebecca made a soft whimpering sound, he dropped to his knees and gathered her in his arms, held her head to his chest, stroked her hair, told her over and over that she was safe. He ventured a glance at Kate, scared in case she caught his eye and saw his shock. But she wasn’t looking at him; her terrified eyes were bolted to Rebecca.

For a split moment it was deathly quiet around them, but then the place erupted. There was a rumble of muttering, the odd scream, people were crying. Angela Howe shouted for someone to call an ambulance. Voices started saying
police
. He heard Lizzie then, calling out for Kate, saying no, no, no, repeatedly. Jon searched the crowd again, but she’d gone. He called her name, then tried to stand, desperate to find her, but Rebecca clutched at his jacket.

‘Don’t leave me,’ she sobbed softly.

He turned back to Kate. ‘Lizzie?’ he shouted over the noise. ‘Where’s Lizzie? Can you see her?’

Kate didn’t move; she didn’t even register she’d heard his voice.

‘Lizzie!’ Jon called. ‘Lizzie!’

Then Stephen was at his side. He crouched next to him. Leant close to his ear. ‘The police are on their way. You should go with Kate. They have to talk to her.’

‘Rebecca doesn’t want me to leave her,’ he said.

‘I think you’ll have to, Jon,’ Stephen said. ‘Someone needs to be with Kate.’

Jon looked down at Rebecca, who stared back at him. ‘I’m going to leave you with Dr Howe,’ he said, as gently as he could.

Rebecca didn’t let go of him.

Dr Howe held out a hand towards her. ‘Come on, Rebecca. Mr Thorne has to go. You’ll be OK. It’s only for a few minutes; your mother is on her way.’

Rebecca recoiled from Stephen, tucking herself tighter into Jon’s shoulder. ‘No, I want him to stay.’

Jon looked at Kate and her eyes met his. ‘I’m sorry,’ she mouthed. ‘I’m so sorry.’

He turned back to Stephen. ‘I’ll stay with Rebecca. She knows me.’

Stephen nodded. ‘Then I’ll accompany Kate.’

Jon’s stomach clenched as he watched Kate walk away from him, the quietened crowd parting like the Red Sea to let her and Stephen Howe through.

He closed his eyes. There was a dreadful throbbing in his head. A sickening sense of foreboding filled him, as if he might never see her again. How on earth had he let this happen? Kate had done something awful and he couldn’t bear to even consider the repercussions, not just from the legal point of view, but on their family, on Lizzie.

He stroked Rebecca’s hair, holding on to her tightly, trying to absorb her shivering, wondering what he could do to make this go away.

Christ
, he thought,
you idiot. What were you thinking? You saw it in her eyes. You knew she wasn’t up to it. You did nothing.

She’d even told him, straight out, said she wouldn’t manage it. He should have been stronger. He should have insisted she stay behind. He should never have exposed her like that. He knew how she felt about the school, how it made her feel. She hadn’t been back since the night Anna died. Not a parents’ evening, or a Christmas concert, or even to meet Lizzie after school, like she used to occasionally, when they’d walk home via Costa for three caffé lattes and two-between-three chocolate brownies. How could he have been so stupid?

Once again all Kate could hear was her own breathing, rasping in painfully deafening spasms against a silent background. What had she done? What the hell had she done?

As she walked back along the school corridors, she went over every excruciating detail, desperate to pinpoint the exact moment she had lost it. Was it when she lifted her hand to Rebecca? When she followed her out of the school hall? With Anna’s lost laugh? Maybe it was as early as sitting on her bed, trying to muster the strength to leave her room. She should have stayed at home. She’d known full well she wouldn’t cope. She should have locked herself away until Tuesday was over. She was stupid. Stupid for trusting herself.

Stephen opened the door to his office and stepped to one side to allow her through. She wondered if he might say something, but he stayed quiet, his eyes on his feet. How unlike him. He was usually the definition of cool. Like the night Anna died, when he’d stepped into the breach, taken control, calm and collected. She often wondered what she and Jon would have done if he hadn’t been there to help. He’d been such a pillar of strength and support. It was Stephen who had broken the news to them. He’d called from this very office. She looked around the room, at the bank of cheap metal shelving that held red, blue and black lever arch files. His desk, tidy and neat, in-tray, out-tray and pending, one of those executive toys with the suspended chrome balls that knocked against each other, pointless and perpetual. Then the phone, grey and cold, placed perfectly in the top right corner like a postage stamp. She pulled her eyes away from it, trying not to recall the words he’d used that night, unable to hear anything else.

‘Mrs Thorne, it’s Stephen Howe. I’m at the school. There’s been an accident. A terrible accident,’ pause, ‘it’s Anna.’ Long pause. ‘I’m sorry.’ A final pause. ‘I was too late here. She was already dead. There . . . there was nothing I could do.’

After that it was blank. No matter how hard she raked through the wreckage in her memory, there was nothing between those words and the moment she laid eyes on Anna on the concrete. She must have gone back upstairs after seeing Lizzie peering down from the landing, got out of her pyjamas, dressed, brushed her hair, thought to go to Anna’s room to grab a cardigan in case Stephen was wrong and she was alive, and, fashionably underdressed as always, was now feeling the chill. They’d have got in the car, driven to school. Parked. Walked through the school. Been led to their dead daughter’s body. There was no recollection of any of it; it was all blank.

She couldn’t have done without Stephen that night. His familiar eyes were a lifeline in amongst all those of the silent, cautious paramedics and police, who looked at her with knowing, sympathetic glances. But Stephen’s soft words, his hand on her lower back, his calm control. He’d been such a support, and not just that night, but following on, with Lizzie too. Hand-delivering the work she missed at school, checking up on her most days to see if she was coping OK, arranging for the counsellor to talk her through her grief. To see him staring at his feet, pale and twitching, unable to meet her eye, was agonizing. What she’d done to Rebecca, her inexcusable loss of control, was clearly a step beyond him, and calling the police to deal with her had apparently floored him.

Stephen cleared his throat when the two policemen finally arrived to break the dreadful silence.

‘Dr Howe?’ the older one asked. He didn’t look at Kate.

Kate squeezed her eyes shut. She wouldn’t cry. She couldn’t. She wasn’t the victim here and she deserved whatever was coming.

Musical Interlude: Number One

She watched the scene from the front of the group of people. They’d all run out of the hall when they heard her mum screaming in the playground then got stuck with shock at what they saw.

Lizzie was numb. She couldn’t feel a thing. All she could do was stare at them both, her mother shaking uncontrollably, standing over a terrified Rebecca.

Noise grew louder around her, and as it did she felt herself smack into life. She started to shake too. She felt faint. Lost. She wanted her mum. She wanted to run to her, have her hold her and tell her it was OK and that she hadn’t meant to hurt Rebecca. She began to cry and call out for her. She’d never seen anything so awful as her mum hitting Rebecca; the anger etched into Kate’s face had terrified her.

Lizzie stepped backwards through the crowd, being jostled left and right as they all tried to get a better view. When she reached the back and found herself free from everyone else, she turned and blindly looked for a place to escape to. But where? She felt faint, sick even, and for a horrible moment she thought she might actually throw up. She leant forward, resting her hands on her knees, trying to breathe deeply, hoping her head would stop spinning enough for her to walk away.

Then Lizzie felt someone touch her.

In a daze she looked up to see who it was. Her vision was blurry and she had to squint to focus. The figure slowly began to make sense; it was Haydn. She was surprised to see him. She hadn’t imagined he would come back for the service. Silly really; of course he’d be there.

Haydn didn’t say anything. He just took her arm and guided her away from the people towards the picnic tables. He sat her down on a bench. She started to speak, but he shushed her with a finger on her lips. He smelt of cigarettes and his skin was rough as if he were made of sandpaper. She watched him reach into his pocket, moving deliberately, silently, as if in slow motion or under water. Then in his hand were headphones, small delicate wires of white, and without a sound he put an earpiece into each of her ears, all the while holding her gaze until he brushed his hand down over her eyelids, closing her eyes and blocking himself and the world around them out.

The music filled her head, muting the shocked gasps, the screaming and crying, flowing into her body like water to a dying man in the desert, the first notes of a tune she didn’t recognize running along her veins to the tips of her fingers and toes, pulsing with her heartbeat, filling her head with colours. A man began to sing. His voice was soft and low, a mournful magic carpet that carried her away from the chaos around her, dissolving her broken mum and the quivering Rebecca into nothing but pinpricks far below.

Haydn’s hand slipped something into her own, and then he squeezed her fingers closed around it. He held her hand for the briefest of moments and there it was again, the sandpaper skin, but this time it was safe and strong and knowing, as if it were the most familiar skin in her world.